Viridian Glass
by Kirenza
Summary: She had been shattered like glass, but it was tinted with a viridian hue that was reminiscent of him. -Anise angst, spoilers!-


**Author's Note:** This has spoilers. Big ones. So don't read unless you're past Mt. Zaleho.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own ToA! D:

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His emerald hair danced gracefully before her eyes, vibrant and filled with life; his pale face glowed brilliantly, a porcelain so delicate she feared that the lightest touch would shatter it like glass. His innocent lips curled up into the brightest smile she'd seen, a smile that suggested that behind its naïve bravado he felt terrible pain and knew awful, destructive truths. A smile that broke her heart.

He haunted her vision, a child-like ghost full of impossible light and color. His laugh floated past her ears like a long-forgotten echo, bright and sweet, with the clear articulation of a silver bell. She felt sick at the thought that she would never hear his calming voice again, feel the pulsating warmth of his hands, gaze sweetly into his crisp jade eyes. She felt disgusting to think that it all had been her doing; she felt that she deserved a fate much worse than death for robbing the world of such an important and influential boy. She'd felt herself shatter in that one moment, his last words lingering in her mind with a terrible, bittersweet ache.

She was broken now, and there was no way she could be repaired.

Her hollow footsteps echoed in the dead silence of the cathedral, in the enormous room that housed the fonstone she'd seen him read so much. She couldn't gaze up at the brilliant stain-glass window, for her vision blurred with salty tears. She hated crying. Rushes of green tinted her clouded eyes, but she shook them away. Someone as low as her didn't deserve to even think of him. Her shaking hand slowly rose to her cheek, feeling it still pulsing from Arietta's slap. She ignored the throbbing pain. After all, she deserved it. Their shouted conversation still lingered on her lips and in her ears, like a sour taste that was imbued forever in her memory.

She sat off to the side, hugging her knees and resting her head on the pillow they made. She didn't pull out Tokunaga like she usually did when melancholy feelings gripped her; it reminded her too much of him, the significance the doll held of their past. Of what she'd done. After a while, another pair of footsteps resonated through the grand hall. Probably an Oracle Knight, she thought bitterly, coming to take me away. The footsteps ceased directly behind her, and she braced for when the Knight would pull her to her feet and drag her from the cathedral and to the prison she deserved.

But nothing happened. Fabric rustled quietly, and she felt the presence of whomever it was wrap itself around her, despite the absence of actual physical contact.

"So," Luke's voice spoke quietly, "you were out here." He put a hand gently on her shoulder, and she bit her lip, tears threatening to spill over. Don't you dare cry, she told herself. "Look, everyone's worried about you. Oliver and Pamela, too…" A lie, she thought. No one would dare to care for me after I killed him.

Her shoulders tensed. "Don't talk to me about them!"

Luke was persistent. "Come on, Anise. You couldn't have done anything differently." She laughed to herself silently. He was so naïve. Just like Ion. "He was holding your parents hostage."

She shook her head violently. "No! I was lying to Ion, from the very start!" her voice cracked, and she bit her lip harder. "Mohs ordered me to report everything Ion did. Trying to stop the war, spending time with you guys… I reported it all!"

"Anise, that's all—"

"Listen!" she shrieked, leaping to her feet. Why was he treating her like nothing was wrong? He knew what she'd done! "The attack on the Tartarus, the ambushes by the Six God-Generals, it's all my fault!" Maybe now he would listen, knowing that she was behind _those_ heinous crimes, as well.

But he still wouldn't back down. "Wasn't that all because you were worried about your parents?"

She let out a breath and plopped back down on the ground, hugging her legs tighter. A light laugh escaped her. "Papa's pretty gullible. When I was really little, he got scammed for a ton of money and got deep into debt. Mohs bailed them out. Since then, my parents have worked for the cathedral without pay." Funny that explaining everything that lead to her betrayal had the inverse effect of calming her, rather than fueling the fires of her self-pity. "I… I couldn't disobey his orders…"

He knelt down again to her level, hand on her shoulder once more. "I know."

She finally glanced up at the stain-glass window, eyes only blurred on the edges now. Warm and bright, filled with color and light. Just like Ion. "I hated it all along. Ion was so trusting, it really hurt to have to lie…" The heartache was back like a virus. "But I… I loved Mama and Papa." Her eyes glanced over at his rough hand, calloused from all the fighting he'd done in his life. His hand was a physical representation of her heart.

"Anise, you did the right thing."

She wanted to scream, to call him an idiot. Killing him was the right thing? He was defective, she decided. A defective replica that got his thoughts and emotions mixed up. Still, she respected him for trying to reason and comfort her.

"It wasn't right," she retorted, looking away. "It wasn't right at all! I… I killed Ion!" Her head burrowed itself into the pillow of her knees. "Poor Ion… It's all my fault. And now he's dead!" She finally cracked on that last word, mind too flooded with all her memories of him, of his brilliance and his beauty that was so pure, it hurt her.

The tears finally broke free. Luke instantly bound his arms around her quaking body. She hiccupped and cried muffled screams into his shirt, wanting all the pain to go away. Luke patted her head over and over, trying to calm the storm that had overtaken her.

He haunted her vision like a melancholy ghost. Glum and lonely, like the day they first met. She wanted so badly to reach out and grasp his hands, let their warmth spread though her and chase away the cold surrounding her calloused heart. And she wanted so much to rip Mohs to shred that instant. Or was it herself? She had killed Ion, after all. Not Mohs. She was the one who had betrayed that innocent boy.

"Anise," Luke murmured into her ear, his breath like a little breeze. "Take this." He slipped a hand into one of his pockets, and she pulled her head back a little, hands still squeezing his shirt. A crystalline aqua stone. "I picked this up in Mount Zaleho. It's a fragment… from the fonstone of the Score that Ion read."

Her small fingers touched the stone lightly, feeling the familiar warmth of Ion's delicate hand. "Ion's fonstone…" she whispered, voice cracking still from grief. She squeezed it between her own hands, trying to prevent its warmth from leaving, wishing it was Ion. Wishing she could have wrapped herself around him, if that's what would have kept him from leaving. But she knew that wouldn't have worked. The tears still came, and she rested the side of her head on his chest.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked quietly, arm around her shoulder. "Are you going to stay in Daath?"

"No," she protested vehemently, staring up into his clear eyes. Crisp like Ion's. For a moment, the tears almost resurfaced. "I'm going with you! I think Ion would have wanted to help. So I'll go, for both his and my sake."

Luke smiled, a sweet smile that she could see harbored hidden truths. He was so much like Ion, it hurt her to even look. If it was possible, she thought, they could be replicas of each other. She smiled for the first time in her exhaustingly long day, wrapping Luke in the tightest hug she could manage, his shirt still damp from her tears.

Luke hugged her tighter still, and, to her surprise, planted a feather-light kiss on her dark mahogany hair. She felt a slight blush surface on her cheeks; she knew it was intended to be a brotherly, get-well kiss, but she couldn't help imagining that Luke was Ion, and that she was smothered in his familiar warmth and innocence. His emerald hair danced before her closed eyes again, but this time, it conjured feelings of peace, of healing. Luke had easily picked up the pieces of her shattered soul, and pieced them together again without her realizing it.

She was whole again.


End file.
